In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. Not every question was compiled - as noted, we only selected the top 8 questions as submitted by the community, plus 2 pre-set questions from us.

As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the second set of three dashes. Oh, and please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written.

Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.

Good luck to all of the candidates!

In addition to the earlier requested naming of your answer at the top, due to the number of candidates typically in the Stack Overflow election, once you've posted an answer, please edit in a link to your answer in this section.

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Can we make the answers sort randomly by default?
– BergiNov 19 '15 at 4:00

10

@Bergi That would be unique to this post - no other main or meta posts enable random sorting - so I doubt SO will implement it. But I hacked together the next best thing: a userscript to add a "random" sort tab to the answers section. You'll need GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey. Get the script here or view source here. Caveat: this is poorly (barely) tested and may melt your browser or make kittens cry.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 19 '15 at 6:18

3

Note to anyone who saw my prior comment: there was a bug preventing addition of the tab until you clicked on one of the existing tabs first. That has been fixed. Source and raw (click-to-install) link
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 20 '15 at 22:04

This is just my view.. in general.. that it's lot more difficult to become a moderator now on StackOverflow compared to what it used to be.. because we just test an individual by meta, by questionnaire, than they explain when they nominate and so on. I feel it's too much just to become a decent moderator.
– Mr. AlienNov 22 '15 at 15:19

17 Answers
17

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

First, I would comment on one of their posts, or ping them in chat, and politely ask them to stop. That has gotten me great results before in these cases. If they stop doing it, then we’ve successfully defused the situation without any ill feelings. This is the ultimate goal of moderation. If they don’t...

Moderators have a tool to manually ban users from suggesting edits - I would use that, then go through their approved edits and rollback where necessary.

For the reviewers, I would look through them and see if any of them are obviously robo-reviewing. I have a zero-tolerance policy for abusing the review queue.

If the only thing a reviewer was doing was approving these edits, though, I wouldn't be comfortable unilaterally banning them if this was the only offense.

For the 2k+ user: This is a harder case. Hopefully, they respond to my earlier chat request. Otherwise, I’d ask my fellow moderators what to do, and learn from them. They’ve likely handled such things before, and would know how to handle it going forward. New moderators learning from old moderators is a wonderful thing.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

This is a quality problem, and should be handled by votes (and the review queues). As a human exception handler, I shouldn’t delete it. I would, though, leave a comment asking the author to add some explanation with their code.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

No one is exempt from our rules. If someone is making the site a toxic environment, we can’t afford that. As with any interaction I have as a moderator: I want the user to stop the behavior, but continue contributing to the site.

I would do my best to help the user ‘rehabilitate’. If they simply won’t stop the behavior, though, their contributions won’t stop me (and my fellow moderators, such a decision would be made with multiple moderators’ input) from enforcing a break from the site. We just can’t tolerate abusive behavior.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would ask them in private chat why they did so. One of two things would happen - either (1) I learn something new, or (2) we reverse a bad decision. Everyone makes mistakes, and communication is vital to any team, especially a team like Stack Overflow’s moderation team. I default to asking questions, so I would fit right in.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

As with a few of my other answers here, I would ask my other moderators what we should do. If I had to make a decision on my own, though, I see a couple cases: Either the content is superfluous/too-chatty, and doesn’t really add anything to the technical discussion, or it adds to the technical discussion but has a tangent or mentions something offensive to the minority.

In the first case (too chatty), we just delete. No reason to make anyone unhappy over content that we don’t need to keep around in the first case.
In the second case (it does add something), I would probably edit it out of the content. We don’t need to leave anything that offends a group of people of any appreciable size around.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

If it's something simple, like company credentials in the post, I would edit out the credentials or identifying information and ping a CM for a revision deletion. If it were a bad question that I would close/delete anyway, I would just delete it.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

I have a slight advantage here - I’d already been promoted to a binding vote on two sites. There’s definitely something that changes in how you think about closing questions. Specifically, I found that I only voted to close things that I was sure were off topic, to an even larger extent than before.

That said, moderators have unlimited close votes. I believe that, while going through the queue (both the flag queue and the close vote queue), I would find plenty of questions that I would be comfortable closing. To answer the question: I would close more questions overall, but I would have a higher threshold for what is closable - because I don’t have four other people validating that decision.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I'd like to do something with answer acceptance. I'm not entirely sure what, but I'm constantly thinking up new ideas. It isn't good for incorrect or low quality answers to be pinned to the top of the heap, but it also wouldn't be good to remove the checkmark entirely.

Overall, though, we have a great set of rules that have served us well. I don't plan on jumping in and changing anything to start with - as I see things we can improve, I would definitely suggest them.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Where there's a problem, I would be confident enough to either handle it or defer to someone who has better knowledge of the room or topic. I should be in chat most of the time - I like having my sites' moderator rooms open to stay up-to-date with what's happening.

Please, ask any questions you have either in the comments here or in the election chatroom - I'm happy to talk about anything!

RE 1st question "This isn’t bad enough, though, for me to ban a reviewer if this was the only problem" Maybe I misunderstood, but the "only problem" was they were robo-reviewing. Can you clarify that if someone has clearly (I mean quite obviously) robo-reviewed multiple times in succession, you would or would not temp ban them? As you also stated "zero tolerance". My view is it's only a temp ban, and while won't fix all bad reviewers, it will make some either realise their genuine mistakes, or pay more attention as they don't want to be banned again - do you agree or disagree with that?
– JamesNov 17 '15 at 0:10

6

@James Thank you, that was unclear wording. I'll edit it. I meant to say that if this was the only thing they were doing, and I didn't see other signs of robo-reviewing, I wouldn't be comfortable banning them. There is enough debate surrounding whether 'too minor' suggestions should be approved or rejected that I wouldn't want to take unilateral action over it. If someone was approving clearly bad things (spam, abuse, etc.), though, there would be no question.
– Undo♦Nov 17 '15 at 0:30

Thanks for clarifying. While I don't think too heavy a hand is necessary, or even effective in most cases, reviews should most certainly be primarily about an improvement to the content in some way and not about earning badges or rep, which seems to be a problem on SO. Good luck with the election (you had my vote before you replied :))
– JamesNov 17 '15 at 0:35

5

I'd like to do something with answer acceptance. I'm not entirely sure what, but I'm constantly thinking up new ideas. It isn't good for incorrect or low quality answers to be pinned to the top of the heap, but it also wouldn't be good to remove the checkmark entirely. interesting and good point, look forward to your ideas
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 9:25

Can you expand further on the answer to question 2? By "handled by votes" do you mean it should be downvoted? I tend to think a "correct" answer, code only or not, should never be voted down as lack of explanation is not listed in the when to vote down guidelines.
– John BNov 20 '15 at 20:44

2

@JohnB People can vote for whatever reason they like - some people really dislike code-only answers, and it's perfectly fine for them to down vote those answers. Some people think they're helpful - and they can upvote them. My main point there is that I wouldn't unilaterally delete such answers as a moderator.
– Undo♦Nov 20 '15 at 20:45

@Undo I'm more specifically wondering if you would consider downvoting in that case. I agree, people should be free to up/down vote as they see fit. I should've clarified "never" applies to my personal preference or omitted that part as we're seeking your opinions here, not mine.
– John BNov 20 '15 at 21:06

2

@JohnB I personally don't tend to downvote them except in egregious cases (there was one where someone had copied ~50 lines of the OP's code and made a 2-character change, for example). I've also upvoted a decent number of self-explanatory ones when I was looking for help with an issue myself. I don't really have a hard "these are bad" or "these are good" opinion on them - it's more case-by-case.
– Undo♦Nov 20 '15 at 21:08

Nailed it. I'd give you my vote but you already have it. Only reservation would be that I'd like to see you more in chat. Less moderators in chat means more room owners exercise their power to kick users from rooms - which is already abused as it is.
– Benjamin GruenbaumNov 22 '15 at 0:43

1

@BenjaminGruenbaum Thank you! On chat - I mostly haven't had a reason to be on chat.SO. Recently, I've been in the SO Close Vote Reviewers room (and I've found a couple ways to deal with the chat trifurcation). As a moderator, I'd probably be in chat far more often for the SO mod room - and from there I'd probably find other rooms to be in. That said, I'm definitely not a master chat moderator... but I'm willing to learn from the masters and step in where needed.
– Undo♦Nov 22 '15 at 1:21

5

Undo and I are fellow moderators on Software Recommendations. SR gets most of the same issues as SO, just on a smaller scale. Having worked with him for over a year, I can vouch that he is a competent, level-headed and active moderator, and I'm sure that he will make an excellent moderator on SO.
– GillesNov 23 '15 at 0:16

1

Clearly you stood out from the rest of the applicants, all the best, and I am putting my money on you. (If I can, because I don't know about the election & reputation rule.) :P
– php_coder_3809625Nov 23 '15 at 10:00

Ed Cottrell's answers:

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

Sadly, this is a real problem, as many people noted in the comments when this question was proposed. The editor making the useless edits is clearly rep-farming and needs to be stopped. I would temporarily ban that user to prevent further clutter and summon them to a private chat. If he or she responded, I would explain the problem. I would consider lifting the ban early if it seemed like the user genuinely hadn't understood the rules before, but I would require some significant persuasion. Most likely, I would let the ban run its course with a warning not to continue the behavior.

As for the bad reviewers, it depends. If there's a pattern of the same reviewers going too fast and making bad calls, they might also need to be temporarily banned from the review queues. On the other hand, mods have too many other pressing things to do to go track down every single person who approved a given edit making only trivial changes. We all make mistakes, and we all had to learn somehow. I'd rather let the audit system catch the random errors.

Regarding the similar situation with a higher-reputation user: I'd take pretty much the same steps as with a newer user. Some high-reputation users don't have much experience with editing or the review queues, so they may not know the rules fully. If it was a user I knew to be reliable, I would suspect some sort of haywire bot, and I'd want the ban in place to stop the bot from doing further damage. If it was somebody I didn't already know as a quality editor, I'd want to find out what was going on and walk them through the issue, just as with a newer user.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No. A correct and complete answer is an answer and almost never low quality, even if it may not be super-high quality. See this answer (not mine) for more on this point. And even an incomplete or incorrect answer that is an attempt at answering the question is not worthy of a "Not an Answer" flag.

I almost always leave comments and vote up or down as appropriate when I stumble across one of these, which is what I would continue doing. Something along the lines of, "This is a good solution to the problem, but it will be more helpful if you explain it a bit. Please add some discussion or even comments in the code to explain why it solves the problem in the question." If I personally can explain it in a sentence or two, I often just go ahead and do so in the comments.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

Yes! I'm particularly "proud" of two questions: Beware, all ye who `enter code here` and Is the “Help and Improvement” queue just bad-question purgatory?. I do lots of cleanup of these very issues (badly formatted questions and questions that are unsalvageable without OP input). My posts and comments there give insight into my moderation style. As an aside: I still think H&I is largely unusable, and I'm still interested in working with the community and the dev team to improve it. The option to cast true close votes (as opposed to raising flags) would go a long way.

I also think this answer and this one, along with my interaction in the comments, demonstrate how I would handle different types of flags and other moderator issues.

Finally, while these are not Stack Overflow-specific, I think my contributions to ebooks, on which I am a pro tempore moderator now, and Meta Stack Exchange are also accurate indicators of my overall approach.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

This is hard to answer in the general sense. Lots of flags might just indicate that the user is a prolific commenter and that some people have thin skin, maybe seeing comments on technical issues as comments on people. It might indicate a communication difficulty or language barrier. Or it might indicate abusive treatment of other users. I'd have to see the specific pattern to know how to address the problem. Generally, some gentle guidance in the comments and cleanup of any out-of-control comment discussions seems to help these kinds of problems. If the user was generating enough flags that it caught my eye more than once, I'd want to have a private chat with the user and figure out what was going on. Only then would I take any big-picture action, if necessary.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Private chat (or offline discussion, for a mod I know offline). There are moderator-only chats for each site, and mods can always create a one-on-one room to talk about these things. It may be that one of us is missing something important, or it may just be an honest difference of opinion. Sometimes 3+ heads are better than 2, and a third opinion would help. The one thing I would not do is get into a close/reopen or delete/undelete kind of battle. That's unprofessional and pointless.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

As I said in my nominating post, "I know my limits. I don't moderate what I don't understand; I get help." There are some minority issues I understand very well, including some that are near and dear to me for various reasons. There are many other such issues I don't understand well, and there are some I don't understand at all. So, I would almost certainly get help before acting. That said, if there's an obvious racial slur or something of that nature, that's different. I may not grok everything about the problem, but I'm happy to delete or edit the offensive content, as needed.

One issue here is that SO gets lots of spam-filtering and profanity-blocking questions. Those almost always involve offensive terms. (I don't know why people can't ask how to block innocent terms like foo and bar but not baz, but the posters almost always include some profanity.) Many of those are basically good posts, so flags on those posts are more likely to just get declined. In these situations, it depends on the language used and the context.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

There might be very, very limited exceptions to this, such as if I have good reason to believe that the question is full of nuclear launch codes. But you are pretty much going to have to convince me that your post will collapse an economy, start a war, destroy a business, or have some truly dire consequences before I will ask the dev team to delete the question simply to clean up your mess.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Yes; right now, I am a little more free with close votes than I would be as a moderator. I sometimes see questions in technologies I don't know well that strike me as unclear, too broad, or obviously off-topic, especially by missing a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example. Right now, I'm willing to close-vote those if I genuinely believe the post is unfixable. I'd be a little more hesitant to do that as the sole closing vote if I don't know anything at all about the technology. I'd still close the question if it was obviously defective - after all, questions can be fixed and reopened - but I'd much rather defer to the community if I'm just not informed enough to be certain of the answer. After all, close votes don't require diamond mods; you just need five votes or, for duplicates, a gold-tag-badge holder.

All that said, I've cast well over 6,000 close votes on Stack Overflow. The vast majority of those questions did, in fact, get closed; very few of them are older than a week and still open. Frankly, I feel pretty confident in my decision-making on close votes.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

On a policy level, I'd be interested in exploring using one of the queues to stop "help vampires" from doing too much damage to the community. For example purposes only: if a user has posted, say, 10 questions with no or negative votes, has posted no answers, and has posted no comments, perhaps we should require that the user's next question pass through the VLQ posts queue. We have a lot of new users with large numbers of questions, all of them boasting zero or negative scores, and no answers. Sending these questions into the wild without any filtering just clutters up the site for everyone. This is something I'd like to explore and discuss on Meta, but not necessarily implement. I'm still trying to formulate my exact thoughts on it.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Sure. I'm not a major chat participant, although I try to hang out in a number of the rooms that interest me and keep tabs on what's going on. Obviously, no moderator can actively monitor the huge number of chat rooms, but I'm happy to help handle flags there and deal with any bad behavior I personally witness.

I'm voting for Ed. I like what Ed said about Respecting all others. It so important in these world turbulent times that we have no borders. We have to remember that some of the users here can't afford the things that some take for granted. For Example a google Play license, web server, domain name.
– danny117Nov 17 '15 at 13:45

I'm for Ed! Good and consistent approach...way to go!
– user1697575Nov 17 '15 at 15:28

A note on #7, if content was previously copyrighted by another entity (i.e.: "work"), it likely can't be re-licensed on S.O. without some legal wrangling, so a user may be in the right asking it to be deleted.
– Ogre Psalm33Nov 22 '15 at 1:28

2

@OgrePsalm33 This is true. That's a legal question, though, and one that may cross the line into the very rare exceptions in which deletion becomes appropriate. I happen to be a lawyer, but I don't represent Stack Overflow. So, a question like that is one I would bring up with other moderators and community managers.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 22 '15 at 2:18

I have to say (that while controversial), I need to immensely disagree with you for your #9 answer. Look at my top-voted question. Our Tour explicitly says that Software algorithms and Coding techniques are on-topic here, but I can see such a close reason being used to close my mentioned question, especially since the purpose of such a reason would be to say "Go try it!". Otherwise, great answers, and I think you would be an excellent moderator here :)
– Zizouz212Nov 22 '15 at 4:08

4

@Zizouz212, thanks for the support! To clarify #9: I don't mean to imply that algorithms and coding techniques are off-topic. Both are definitely on-topic, as long as the question contains enough information to make the question answerable in a few paragraphs. The problem is the "give me the codez" or "write my algorithm" questions in which the OP shows no effort even to understand the question. The question you linked to doesn't have those problems. :) Obviously, people do sometimes misuse close votes, which is why (1) the CV reasons need careful wording and (2) we often reopen questions.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 22 '15 at 4:17

You can never go wrong with Ed as your role model if you ever need someone to watch (not in a creepy way of course....or is it?), to learn from and grasp the concept of a level head and professionalism throughout all. My first pick any day of the week mate, mainly because you trawl around the PHP tag too ;-)
– DarrenNov 23 '15 at 0:01

2

Hey, thanks, @Darren! It means a lot to me that people here see me that way.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 23 '15 at 0:24

I'm with @James_Parsons, +1 for you because of #9.
– RaphaelDDLNov 24 '15 at 20:53

Andy's answers

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

If these are truly minor edits (fixing the same misspelled word in all posts/only removing "thanks"/etc) I'd send the user a message informing them of our editing guidelines. I'd specifically point out the note that

Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it.

Following up on this, I'd take a look at the reviewers as well. If the reviewers are engaging in robo-reviewing, I'd issue a review ban to prevent their continued actions.

The difference between a >2K and <2K user, when performing edits, is that they don't waste reviewers' time. If their edits are minor, I'd follow up with them the same way. Inform them that even with their 2K reputation, tiny, trivial edits are discouraged

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No.

Especially if the answer is correct.

It may not be a great answer, but deletion is not the appropriate action to take. Possible actions I'd take include leaving a comment requesting an explanation, down voting or even writing a competing answer with an explanation.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

I'm proud of several of my posts both here on Meta.SO and on other network sites I participate in. Here on MSO, I have two questions that I am proud of:

In both of these, you can see that I care about quality on Stack Overflow. I've spent time analyzing the problem, as I see it, and present my findings to the community. I participated in the discussions that both posts generated and continue to run the bot to this day.

With all of these, I've presented my arguments and logic and strived to remain professional. I believe the community on HardwareRecs has seen that as well.

As a moderator on Community Building, I've been involved in many discussions. I was involved in the discussions to rename the community from Moderators.SE to CommunityBuilding.SE. I've been involved in discussions about slow growth of the community. I've also presented arguments that go against other moderators, and walked away still feeling like a moderation team. (Go communication!)

Finally, on OpenSource, I made a post about how moderators had implemented a policy to watch the reviewers. It was similar to the long removed "flag weight" option that used to exist. I believe the post was presented in a way that questioned the decisions of the moderators, yet remained professional.

With all of these meta posts, across the network, I think you can pick up on my moderation style and personality. I like data and I try to present my thoughts in a way that is understandable to all. I'm also willing to speak my mind.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

No one has an exemption from the Be Nice policy. The posts are valued but the behavior is not. As such, I'd encourage the user to adjust the behavior. If this doesn't work, then a series of escalating bans - as is the common policy - would take place. With these bans would be a mod message explaining that their behavior isn't acceptable, regardless of the quality of their posts. While it's unfortunate to lose a user that has contributed good content, if they are driving away less experienced users with their behavior it makes sense to eliminate the problem. A toxic atmosphere of abusive comments should not be something a user of any level of experience has to deal with.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

There is only one way to handle this: talk with the other mod. I'm certainly not a mind reader and I'm guessing they aren't either. I'll take a few minutes to sit down and talk with them about my concerns, listen to their reasoning and, I imagine, we'll come to some kind of agreement on what to do with the post.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

When this question was posed as a potential question for nominees, a related question was mentioned in the comments. I have an answer on that question.

The short answer is, that if I am unsure of the context - why would should I be offended by the comment? - then a discussion of some kind needs to occur. On option is talking to other moderators. It's likely they have seen such comments before and can explain the context. However, if they can't, it makes sense to talk to the user that is claiming offense. Using this discussion, I can learn the context behind why it's offensive. If I agree, I remove the comment.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

I do not delete the question. Unfortunately, for the poster, once they posted it's been licensed to Stack Exchange under the CC-SA terms. However, I will explain that they do have a few options that can be pursued. Option 1 is to request disassociation from the specific post that may get them in trouble. This removes their name from the post. Option 2 is to change code in the specific post to something more generic that still exhibits the problem the question is focused on. A combination of these two options may be appropriate as well. In rare cases, it's appropriate to ask for the original revision to be deleted. If one of those cases has occurred, I'll forward the request along to the Community Managers.

If the question and answers are not good (ie. everything is down voted), I'm more willing to remove the entire post from the site. I do not like the idea of removing multiple good answers simply because someone didn't realize they can't post proprietary code on a public web site.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

More. This is simply because I'll have more options to do so. Working through the moderation queues will naturally lead me to issue more close votes.

Voting organically, as I look for questions to answer, won't change either. I'm happy with my voting record and voting style. I feel I'm fair and accurate and will continue that behavior.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

At the risk of talking myself out of a position, I think more community moderation would help the problem that Stack Overflow has with scaling moderators. There are a couple areas that I think would work well in opening this to the higher reputation users

Comment flagging: Comments can be removed if enough users flag a comment. If not, a moderator needs to handle the flag. Instead, opening this as a review queue can remove a lot of this burden from the moderators. Users could handle all but the "Other..." flag. There may be guidance needed on the "Obsolete" one due to the difference between "obsolete comment" and "obsolete code block" differences.

Audit Review reviews: On Stack Overflow, we get a decent number of disputed audit review posts on meta. There may be a way to get users with a history of passing both audits and good reviews involved in dealing with these disputed audits. The idea would be to say whether an audit is good or not.

These changes, and other areas where the community could be leveraged for moderation tasks, helps to remove the burden on moderators. Handling 2,000 (and growing) flags a day means that something needs to change. Moderators are exception handlers. They should be handling the cases that are exceptional - not comments that are no longer relevant.

For the community, this would be more involvement with the moderation aspect. Users would be able to more quickly clean up a comment thread. Flag it and it appears in the review queue. From here, the moderators don't need to be involved. The downside of this is that it adds another queue for users to be involved with.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Yes. In doing so, I admit that I'd need to learn the cultures of several rooms on Stack Exchange, but I think that is a worthy goal. In my profile, you can see several network chat rooms that I already frequent. I help handle moderator flags at that level. Learning the rooms, cultures and users around here is something that I look forward to.

I was wondering how you were going to deal with comments, after making your comments script. It concerns me also when I use my flags..knowing how busy people are, yet it's good to keep the site clean... +1 I hope the comment script doesn't get me hehehe.. no seriously +1 for being so proactive with it.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 19 '15 at 7:15

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

There are two broad categories such behaviour falls into: obsessive nerds, or someone trying to game the system to artificially ramp up reputation. If the former, we do not necessarily disapprove of this behaviour, though the user should probably spend more time on more substantial edits instead of thousands of tiny mostly useless edits. If the latter, we certainly want to suppress that behaviour. In either case, contacting the user is a first step. If they're reasonable, it should be possible to rectify the situation with that. If they're not, their response and future behaviour will show that, and more drastic measures can be taken to stop them.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No. There's no reason to delete a correct answer. If it's not valuable because it lacks too much explanation, it can be downvoted (though I probably wouldn't even do that). First and foremost, if you think it lacks explanation, comment on it to point that out, or suggest an edit adding a bit of context.

Having said that, there are usually two types of code-only answers: long walls of code along the lines of "I fixed it for you", and short three-or-four-liners providing concisely the answer needed. It's only the former ones which are a real issue, since it's often not even obvious what exactly was changed/fixed.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

That largely depends on what the comments/flags are about. If the user is actively rude, that needs to be addresses urgently. Rudeness and aggression must not be tolerated. The usual steps should be taken: contact, on non-compliance some time in the penalty box etc.
If the discussion is largely about technical merits, there's not much to do. The community is judging technical prowess by votes, it's not up to moderators to decide.
Perhaps the user is simply drawn to a lot of VLQ posts which can often end up in long comment threads where people are trying to pull information out the OP's nose; in this case a simple reminder that one is not obliged to waste time in those threads will do the trick.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

The last thing I'll get into is a close-open war with another mod. Even if there may be disagreements, mods shouldn't be airing such dirty laundry in public. If I'm of a very strong opinion about the question, I'll contact the mod asking for reasons and/or whether I could change their opinion.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

Try to understand the issue at hand by contacting the minority involved, since it's apparently elusive to the general public. If I get to share the understanding of the offence, it may be worth a Meta or blog post to educate a wider range of users about the issue.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

No. It's up to every poster to check whether they'll get in trouble by publicly posting content before they do so. Their content is now public in more ways than one (caches, copies, licensing etc.), so the cat is already out of the bag. In extreme cases, we can talk about disassociating the user from the question and/or irretrievably editing-out sensitive details; though the OP will have to be very convincing for this to happen.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Good question. Tricky question. I'm using many of my available dupe hammers many times a day already, so nothing would change there. In some rare cases I cast a tentative close vote and wait whether the community agrees or not with four more votes. I may get slightly more reluctant in these cases. In many other cases though, I'll be happy to be able to close clearly crap questions immediately which would otherwise take forever to accumulate the five votes needed.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

At the moment I do not have anything in mind that would need changing. The policies have evolved quite a bit over time and are at a decent point I believe. They will have to change again sooner or later, I'm pretty sure, and we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

My problem with chat is that it kills my productivity. Stack Overflow by itself is already disruptive enough, but if you put me in a chat, I'll forget most other things. ;)
As such, while I'm not opposed to the idea, I may be reluctant to do so. If I can be notified of issues without actually being in the chat constantly, I may be able to help out.

Nice answers, love the obsessive nerds :) Yeh I find chat rooms can be time consuming and exhausting, but I think you get pinged if something is flagged? My only concern with you was your comments about your diminishing activity on SO (in the nomination section).. though a new baby is a good reason (congrats).
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:21

2

@MrsEd Yeah, gotta love obsessive nerds. ;) The diminishing activity may be bad phrasing on my part. I'm still as active as ever, except maybe for weekends, where it's really family time, period. Even my rep is on the same steady trajectory it's been on for years.
– deceze♦Nov 18 '15 at 20:46

ah, that's a shame I misinterpreted it.. yeh, I think it's good to have family time and just time away from the keyboard.. it would probably make your time at the keyboard more productive. Good luck :)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 21:04

At least one of your MSO answers makes obesiance to Cthulhu, the Great Dreamer. If elected, is it your intent to usher in an era of unending, incomprehensible terror? Also, who would win in a fight between you and Shog9?
– AirNov 23 '15 at 21:14

2

@Air Unending, incomprehensible terror in-ushering is one of the core duties of a moderator as far as I could gather from the job description as posted, is it not? As for your second question, is it permissible to attach lasers to the domestic SE unicorns, or must sharks be used in the fight?
– deceze♦Nov 23 '15 at 21:23

If you're even considering running for mod again this year, I'd like to provide a little nudge and say "go for it"!
– Josh CaswellNov 8 '16 at 17:43

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

A quick comment on one of the posts they've edited (editors get @pinged) goes a long way. Most of them need guidance, more than correction.

There are cases, however, when a user is abusing the suggested edit system to get easy rep without making actual contribution. In which case, a moderator can (and should) ban the user from making suggested edits or in extreme cases, privately contact and suspend the user from the site. It heavily depends on context.

This also applies for users with full editing privileges (the only difference is that we can't revoke their privilege).

As for the reviewers. We can investigate to see whether their approve:reject ratio is abnormal, and suspend their reviewing abilities.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No. I would ask the author to clarify their answer and/or downvote. Deletion is for unsalvageable crap.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

History suggests that users, even high reputation ones, who are being disruptive eventually get suspended. I hate getting there. I'd try any avenue possible, from speaking in chat, to privately contacting, to even speaking to the user outside of Stack Overflow (by email or some other sort), to avoid suspension.

In any case, suspending highly contributing users are never a one moderator call, and usually include a Community Manager's involvement.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Speak to said mod and reach a conclusion. Moderators have private chatrooms and flags in which we can communicate with one another effectively.

I would not just undo the moderator's action, that is unprofessional.

If we cannot reach a conclusion, I would put it up for public discussion in meta.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

I'd try to seek advice from fellow moderators and hopefully get someone who knows the issue better than myself. If no one knows enough, and Google doesn't provide with enough details on the problem. I would decline the flag, and prompt the user who raised it to raise the issue again in meta.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

The current policy in place is to not delete a good question with useful answers, even if OP asks for it. I would ask whether anonymizing their question is good enough, and if it isn't, then the issue would have to be escalated to a Community Manager.

I'm aware that it's being harsh, but my stand is that what you post on the internet is now public information, if you have company or other secrets, you should know better than to post them online.

TL;DR: Involve Stack Exchange staff.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Maybe a little. I'm often very sure with my votes. I do have a gold badge in 4 tags, plus I am a moderator on other sites. So I'm confident with binding votes.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

None. I firmly believe in organic growth and public discussion. I have a few ideas for moderation tools that can be added, (for example, community handling of more flags, moderators from other sites able to respond to red flags, etc). But those will need to be discussed first.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Absolutely! Chat is where I've most active, and I feel it's a very important part of the site. Discussion with smart people is something we should encourage.

Chat moderation on chat.stackoverflow is severely lacking (as well as chat attention in general), and that's something I'd really want to change.

Couldn't help to notice that when editing the question with a link to your answers, you were the only candidate who boldly added your link to the top of the list, while everyone else added their at the end of the list based on post date. A trifle perhaps, but a bit of modesty never hurts.
– LundinNov 23 '15 at 14:04

@Lundin The candidate may have made a snap judgment that the ordering was inconsequential (efficient), consciously bucked the trend in order to better advocate their position (effective) or simply misunderstood the implied convention (who cares).
– AirNov 23 '15 at 21:00

1

Didn't notice which way it went, but feel free to move me to the bottom, apologises.
– Madara Uchiha♦Nov 23 '15 at 22:40

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

Though some of the issues with this behavior aren't relevant for 2k+ users (the rep gain goes away and suggested edit queue reviewer resources are not consumed) other issues remain (e.g. flooding the active page). As a result, I might still ping a 2k+ reviewer via comment or chat in particularly egregious cases that have both a high volume of edits and that really aren't fixing anything.

As for robo reviewing, I've flagged it for mod attention whenever I've seen bad cases of it, and as a diamond mod I would hand out warnings and review bans where appropriate.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No -- since the indicated answer is correct and self-explanatory to an experienced user then neither a VLQ nor an NAA flag is appropriate and I would decline either. Especially for new users I will often leave a small comment encouraging them to expand their answer, often to good effect.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

This depends on the nature of the arguments/flags, as there's a spectrum all the way from a user who just occasionally leaves terse comments (no mod action required) to a user who is rude/abusive to others (requiring at the least a conversation and possibly a timed suspension).

I think it's important for all users to be civil to one another regardless of their reputation (this is enshrined in the "Be Nice" policy), and I would suspend a user who is repeatedly abusive to others. That being said, I would certainly do so in consultation with the other mods and with the full understanding that such suspensions are highly scrutinized by the community.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would ask them about it privately and in a cordial manner. It could be something simple that's easily remedied, like a misclick or one of us misreading a question or answer. Even if not, it's likely that after a bit of discussion we'll come to a good decision about what to do with the post, and there's a good chance I'll have learned something about moderation in the process.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

I would err on the side of removing a phrase that might be offensive -- Stack Overflow is a professional site so I can't see many situations where borderline offensive material would be important in a question or answer, even if the majority of the population wouldn't be offended. After verifying the user doesn't appear to be trolling (aka they are legitimately offended by the material), I would remove the comment/phrase from the post.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

I would be very unlikely to delete the whole question because it has already gotten some good answers -- it's unfair to those who have already answered to have their work destroyed and it is further unfair to future internet searchers who would no longer be able to benefit from the content. By asking a question on Stack Overflow the user has already licensed the content to Stack Exchange, as evidenced by the footer in really small font at the bottom of every page.

That being said, I would probably mention the option of disassociation from the question or editing and nuking the revision history, along with the disclaimer that these options should only be used in extenuating circumstances.

If instead this post had a small number of low quality answers then I might instead delete the question. I have definitely seen diamond mods take this path to deal with users vandalizing their own posts due to having posted homework or confidential information.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

As I said in my statement I try to moderate with a light touch; this is certainly something I would continue as a moderator. I already cast close votes keeping in mind that my action might end up on meta (after all, it might!), and I routinely skip close vote review tasks when I feel I don't have the expertise to moderate them. In short, I don't think I would dramatically change how I assess whether to cast a close vote as diamond mod because I am already quite careful.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

Tagging is a key tool for organizing questions on Stack Overflow, yet the mechanism we have for suggesting tag synonyms leaves much to be desired. I would love to see the tag synonym system restructured so we don't need to wait multiple years in some cases for synonyms to be approved. I think the key to fixing this problem is getting more community involvement in the tag synonym process. After all, many hands make light work. In particular, I think some combination of the following changes (all proposed by other community members) could improve the process:

I think this should be coupled by moderators more proactively responding to tag synonym requests that are posted on meta, something that I would like to do if elected as a diamond mod. I think these improvements, taken together, could significantly help both regulars and new users find relevant content fast.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

I've never been a room owner, but I have tried recently to become more active in chat, and I would be glad to moderate where needed.

Mureinik's Answers

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

There are several issues here. The user suggesting these edits is obviously doing something "wrong", or at least something that doesn't align with the spirit of suggesting edits. At best, he's just misunderstanding the spirit of suggesting edits, and how they are supposed to improve the site. At worst, he's attempting to game the system for an easy reputation gain, two points at a time. My initial gut reaction is to give people the benefit of the doubt and not to assume nefarious motives where lack of understanding could explain the situation just as easily. I'd start with pinging that user by commenting on one of those posts with a message in this spirit:

Hey [name]. You seem to have made several minor edits during the last hour. As noted in the help center, Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you observe.

If this behavior still persists after such a notice, I believe a moderator can impose an edit ban, and if that doesn't work either, longer or wider bans could be employed.

With regard to the edits already made, I'm a firm believer that actions should be judged by their own merit, not by whoever performed them. A minor edit that doesn't correct all the problems in a post but is still correct still improves the post - I wouldn't touch it. In fact, I'd probably complete the editing task on that post to show a better example. Any edit that actually makes the post worse, I'd revert.

With regard to these post's reviewers - again, my guideline is giving people the benefit of the doubt. Everyone can make a mistake, or several, or even full-heartedly approve such an edit due to his own belief it was a good edit. However, if I see a pattern of the same user(s) approving multiple edits, I'd leave a note on one of those edited posts. If this bad behavior persists, I'd consider a temporary ban from reviewing.

The second case of a user having more than 2K reputation is more interesting. On the one hand, such a user has less to gain from such behavior, except for perhaps chasing the Editor/Strunk & White/Copy Editor badges. On the other hand, with more than 2K reputation, such a user should have a pretty good idea of how editing is supposed to work. I'd still leave him a message, but would be much more inclined to revert his edits and/or edit ban him.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

This obviously depends on the answer itself, and my own level of understanding in the subject matter, but as a general sentiment - no. This doesn't sound like a [very] low quality answer - while this answer may not be useful to the OP, it may very well be useful to future readers with a slightly higher level of proficiency in the language/tool. I would however comment and ask the author to elaborate a bit:

@name while this answer seems correct and may be self explanatory to a reader with good knowledge of [subject], it would be significantly better if you explained the problem in the OP's code and how your code fixes that issue.

Regardless, I'd mark the flag as helpful. Despite not triggering the deletion of the answer, this is the kind of behavior you'd want a mod to be aware of, and I prefer it if the potential flaggers err to the side of caution.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

Admittedly, I haven't been too active on Meta. I don't know if "proud" is the right word, but I especially enjoyed sharing my my story in the 10M question thread. I have a couple of answers (1, 2) that express some of my thoughts about SO and about moderation - the way the site's mechanics can and should be used to encourage the behavior we'd like to see, and moreover, my belief that communication is key, and you should assume users act as they act due to misunderstandings, not malice, until proved otherwise.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I'm a firm believer in the Be nice rule. A "steady stream of valuable answers" is definitely positive, but not at the cost of making other users feel unncomfortable or unwelcome. Like with any other user, I'd delete the belatedly offensive comments, and issue a warning. If the same user continues with this behavior, banning, although it's an extreme measure, is always an option.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

First, I think that a bit of disagreement is a good thing. We aren't robots, and all the mods were elected, by part, due to their views of how moderation should be done. These disagreements are an important opportunity to exchange ideas and learn from each other, so I'd try to understand why he/she handled the situation the way he/she did, and try to explain why I'd have handled it differently. Having said that, it's important to display a unified message, so users don't get the feeling that behaving in a certain way is OK during specific hours when mod X is active, or on a specific topic when mod Y focuses his attention - so I'd try to have this discussion in some private medium between the two of us, or within the moderators group. I'm not quite sure about the technicalities of such a medium, having never been a mod before, but I'm sure one exists.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

Delete it, upfront. And if such a transgression occurs, ban the offender. Besides the general guideline to "be nice", such offenses of this kind are especially unacceptable, as they criticize the poster, not the post. A comment like "this is a horrible solution because of XYZ" may be harsh, and depending on the wording even inappropriate, but it's essence still deals with the issues we all came here to discuss - coding. The fact that the poster belongs to any nationality, religious group, gender, sexual orientation, etc. has nothing to do with the quality of his posts. The fact that someone attempted to make him feel unwelcome because of such an affiliation is, in my opinion, inexcusable.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Generally speaking, no. Although I've advocated giving people the benefit of the doubt throughout this answer, I must admit that such behavior strikes me as dishonest. I find it hard to believe that someone honestly didn't understand what harm a post could cause them, and only realizing it after his question got answered. Regardless, SO doesn't aim to answer questions just for the benefit of whoever asked them, but to be a useful source of information. Once the asker put his question out there, he lost any ownership over it he may have had.

Having said that, I think that there are several reasonable exceptions. First, I would definitely help the asker edit/modify the question to remove personal or corporate information that isn't crucial to the question. Second, if leaving the question up will expose SO to any legal liability (e.g., publishing copyrighted materials), I'd definitely help removing it, or at least editing it so the issue is defused.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Both, surprisingly enough. First, I'd put in more effort closing questions I feel 100% confident of closing (not that I haven't been doing so so far, with more than 11K close votes and 4K deletion votes). Mods are given their extra privileges due to the community's vote of confidence that they will use them wisely, for the greater good. Not to use them would be an abuse of this trust.

On the other hand, I'd be more hesitant with questions I'm not 100% sure about. I sometimes encounter a question that I'm not 100% sure should be closed. I usually wouldn't mind casting the first or second close vote on such a question just to get the ball rolling, since this close vote will essentially be peer-reviewed, and if I'm misguided, this closure vote should ultimately be rejected. As a mod, you don't have such a privilege - your close vote is immediate, and requires no coalition, so I'd think long and hard before closing a question I'm not sure about.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

The one policy that always bugged me was the 60 day limit on migrations. As the Stack Exchange network grows and add more sites, more and more questions seem to have a better place than SO. Two notable examples are Database Administrators that was launched several years after SO and Open Source that just recently launched its public beta.

The way I see it, the questions (and more importantly - the answers!) in SO don't exist only to help the original asker, but as a (hopefully) searchable knowledge base that future users can use as a reference. And where would we want to direct people looking for answers on database administration? Here, or to a specific site dedicated for such questions?

This should obviously be done carefully. For example, we shouldn't penalize users for asking or answering questions on database administration here before there was a dedicated site for it by removing their points when the question is migrated. But implementation details aside, I really see no point in this question "ageism". If a question is better suited to a site other than SO, it should be migrated there, regardless if it's sixty seconds old, sixty days old, or sixty months old.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Frankly, I'm not an avid chat user, but sure - it should come with the territory. You can't be a moderator by only moderating the parts you enjoy and ignore the parts you don't like.

On #6, maybe you misread the question - are you really saying you would ban someone because one person took offense to their post, for a reason you aren't familiar with? Do you automatically assume that anyone who gets a flag like this was deliberately trying to make someone feel unwelcome?
– Sean Van GorderNov 20 '15 at 23:51

@SeanVanGorder it's really hard to answer such questions "up in air", without a specific example, but I find it hard to think of a situation where a reader of a post would take offense as a member of some minority group where the poster didn't even mean to reference it. "It's just a figure of speech" or "I didn't mean it in an offensive way" aren't acceptable excuses, at least not in my book.
– MureinikNov 21 '15 at 6:41

@SeanVanGorder a distinction needs to made between a comment that is harshly worded but ultimately to the point ("that's a really stupid answer because it doesn't consider <edge case>") to a comment that targets the poster's ("only a stupid <racial slur> would think that's a good answer"). They're both flaggable, and both probably need moderator intervention, but on a completely different level.
– MureinikNov 21 '15 at 7:15

3

@Mureinik You don't make that distinction in your answer. The question is about handling unusual cases where the offense is unclear. Here's an example: someone says "gypped", unaware of its origin as a slur. A Romani reports this as offensive, but the poster meant no harm. Example 2: someone uses "magic" to refer to confusing code, and a Wiccan takes offense as magic is sacred to them. Example 3: a question is reported for having a variable named after a local slur for a native tribe, but a google search yields no evidence that the word is a slur. How would you handle these three cases?
– Sean Van GorderNov 21 '15 at 12:54

@SeanVanGorder it seems that I have indeed (mis-?)undestood the question differently than you. These examples don't hit either category I mentioned in my previous post. In a case like that, I'd edit the offense out, and leave a comment explaining why I did it. I'll also make a note to myself (and the other moderators, in some private way), to keep a look out for this poster's potential future transgressions. Making an honest mistake is only human, but if this is a repeating behavior - there's nothing honest about it.
– MureinikNov 21 '15 at 16:29

4

@Mureinik wait, you're explicitly saying that you'd edit out the "offensive" content in all of Sean's example cases, including any usage of the programming term "magic" and including totally unsubstantiated claims that some word is an obscure tribal slur despite it not being documented as such on Google? That is - if you'll forgive my use of an ableist slur - completely insane.
– Mark AmeryNov 21 '15 at 18:30

4

side note: if you have a moment can you chime in here...
– reneNov 21 '15 at 22:12

2

Sorry to ping you here @Mureinik, but this is now getting out of hands. As you may know, I posted a disputed question about an edit of yours few days ago. I'm not here to debate wether or not it was appropriate, that has been discussed to some length already. I may miss something about edits. Many people assume it was a misclick. I'd like to hear what you have to say bout it, so we can bring some closure to that somewhat-starting-to-be-hateful debate.
– Félix Gagnon-GrenierNov 24 '15 at 17:34

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

45 in an hour is a drastic amount! I would want to confer with other mods on this part but I think rolling them back would be appropriate. Of course this would also mean sending some message to the user letting them know this isn't accepted editing behavior

The reviewers are a different story. Assuming these are being approved by a lot of the same reviewers, a timeout is definitely needed for them. If there a reviewers who just approved one here or there but doesn't have a history of this behavior then I don't think any action is needed there.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

I'm a big hater of code only answers. But...it wouldn't be my job to decide on the technical accuracy nor would I be expected to so those points are meaningless here. It obviously is an answer so deleting and accepting either flag would not be fitting. This could still help someone else so I may suggest to the author to add some explanation and/or references with their code.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

This post about abusive chat I think demonstrates well how I would moderate. I feel I did a good job of getting to the real issue and helping to defuse it. I cleared up some misunderstandings and took blame where appropriate. I did all this after taking a short break to collect and calm myself because, from the beginning, I wanted to use a lot of different words and tone than I ended up with.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I'm not sure this can be answered without knowing if the flags or arguments are legitimate. However, this is obviously a beneficial member of the community so my first approach (assuming there is some validity to the flags/arguments) would be to reach out to them, let them know (on a general basis) what is happening, and offer some friendly advice to stop these reactions.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

The first step here would be to reach out to the mod in question first. There's no need to involve others if this can be handled between us. Maybe I am missing something that the other mod sees or maybe the other mod is missing something. If we can't see eye to eye or agree to disagree, my next step would be to involve some other mods in chat or elsewhere.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

If the user is offended (and it's not obviously a troll or similar) then the post should go. It might not offend most, but we should strive to not offend anyone (yes, this is quite impossible but we can do our best).

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

If the user has a history of doing this, sorry about your luck. You obviously know by now that this isn't acceptable on a large scale. If it seems to be a genuine mistake, I would do what I could to have information changed to protect the user as best as possible. If this isn't a possibility then I think the user should do the work of asking a similar question with no real information then I could migrate the answers to that post. Win win win!

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

I don't see why anything much would need to change here. I would still "vote" the way I would now.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

This is tough and I'm sure there's a lot more that I could think of which would be more important. However, the first thing that comes to mind is the 20 chat rep limit when a higher rep user wants to invite a low rep user to chat to discuss a post and/or the use of SO. I've got a meta answer regarding temporary chats for this purpose. I think this could eliminate a lot of clutter in comments, keep different folks happy and interested, and would do a lot of good.

Again, there's a lot more that would probably be more beneficial but that's the first thing that pops in my head. I'd really like to see that feature go through.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Yes! Certainly! I love chat. I try to mention it in meta posts/comments any time it is somewhat relevant. It's too bad that chat is so "secondary". It is very helpful to myself and many others that I've talked to. I think it should be utilized much much more (instead of SO posts and meta posts in many situations).

For example, there are plenty of meta posts about closing/reopening questions which may be closed as dupes that are better handled in chat by experts of that language/technology. We of course see a ton of off-topic/broad questions on the main site which would be completely acceptable in many chat rooms.

Are you sure chat should be used more than SO and Meta posts? As chat is useful for one person but these posts may be used by other users in future also.
– SKDNov 18 '15 at 6:21

@SKD I apologize that my description was a little broad and misunderstood. I have edited now but I basically mean that there are many situations where chat is more useful instead of a meta/so post that draws negative attention.
– codeMagicNov 18 '15 at 13:35

I found your meta post example interesting. I had a look at all the nominees profiles and had a look at your chat room and the rules.. and you explain them very clearly. I have an interest in android myself, so was even more interested in your links. And the irony is, you'd like to waive the 20 rep limit to take new users into chat, this shows you are fair. I also get frustrated with that. When helping a newcomer, sometimes a chat can really help sort some things out for them. Good luck in your election :)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:29

@MrsEd Thank you for your interest and your kind words. The 20 rep limit removal idea was more to help someone temporarily. You can read more about it in this meta answer of mine. But I think this could go a long way in helping new developers and members as well as take away some clutter from posts by newer folks. Thanks again! And feel free to request access in Room-15 if you'd like to join our conversations. You seem to meet the necessary criteria :)
– codeMagicNov 18 '15 at 20:39

1

@codeMagic oh yeh, I got that about it being temporary, I think it's a great idea, if an experienced user goes into a chat, because the comments do become noisy, even if they are on topic. I will have a look at you answer.. I'm starting to follow meta more regularly and really enjoying the community. Thanks for the invite to chat. I'll probably request, and come in when I have some spare time.. sometimes life feels frantic, and I'm often on SO answering questions between other activities (I suspect many of us are :)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 20:59

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

With the edits being approved it may be hard to even notice this behavior. Assuming that perhaps the edits are being rejected at a slow rate which accumulates to eventually result in a moderator flag or similar behavior (I don't have access to those tools), I am not sure if they are already banned from editing. If they were automatically banned, then there is no longer any required action to take with regards to the user as their ban has started. However, there are now 45 posts which require review to see why edits to those posts hit the automated edit ban. 45 posts isn't too many to review so I would look them all individually - this wouldn't be the first time I have had that many tabs open. In all likelihood if it took 45 posts to hit the ban some subset of the content is agreeable so I don't want to just walk over everything with impunity. I would end up rolling back only the edits that seemed egregious. At that point I would go to the egregious posts and then look at the approved reviews to see if any of the reviewers were roboreviewing - this could take a while depending on how large the set was. Depending on their actions it may be necessary to remind them to take longer per edit and when possible improve the post for small edits. If they were truly roboreviewing I would hand out a small review ban and indicate why in a message.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

Code only answers are an attempt to answer the question. While they may not be as helpful as other answers, that is for the community to decide. I would decline a flag on these posts because it isn't a moderators duty to delete code only answers on their own without a very good reason. As a member of the community I would perhaps comment on the post that it could use an explanation of why the code was a solution, and downvote if I felt the approach shown was not appropriate.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

There are a lot more of these in my profile, feel free to poke around. For the majority of my posts I focus on addressing low quality questions in general that would abuse the community by simply requesting work like Stack Overflow was some sort of personal code writing tool.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I see this often "in the wild" (while browsing/answering). Sometimes users get into rough disagreements and they get personal with each other. It is an unfortunate side effect of disagreement and it is a problem in more places than just Stack Overflow. One instance of this happening could be an anomaly. However, a pattern of this is unfortunate and would need to be addressed. It should be a scaled approach though, lightly admonishing at first, then removing the ability to comment, and then suspension of some time frame. Suspending a contributing user should be a consensus between several moderators in my opinion, and this is only in extreme cases. More than likely the admonishment would be enough for the user to improve their ways.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would do what I do now. Take it to meta and ask the community. After all, as moderators we are just community members with extended powers, but we are still part of the community and should abide to the community consensus in these situations. By getting the response from meta on the question, the community would more than likely action it themselves here, or perhaps my disagreement was not consensus and it remains closed.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

I think that content reigns supreme here, and if comments aren't content based then there is no point to having them around. I would remove the comment if it was even hinting at being off topic because comments are second hand citizens. Also, I believe users here should be respectful and show class at all times when interacting with other members of the community - and that definitely includes minority groups. Depending on the severity of the comment, more action may also be needed for the user such as a message, comment ban, or suspension.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Unfortunately the question will not be removed. The content is now a part of the community and that is the price you pay for putting anything out on the internet - welcome to the 21st century. However, there are still some possible remedies here for the user. The request can be escalated to have the post disassociated from their account and the content edited to remove any personally identifying information.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

This will not change how often I vote to close questions. However, it will change how often questions get closed because sometimes questions do not receive enough attention to be closed by 5 members of the community. This issue led to several problems historically (we used to have over 100,000 close votes) and so now they age off quicker. My point is that I am very confident that I can assert the community consensus for closure on questions, have taken part in years of discussion on the topic, and would have no qualms closing questions with a binding vote.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I have to say, Stack Overflow in general is very receptive to new ideas, and even making those ideas policy. I have a history of taking part in suggesting these ideas and also agreeing with the direction of policy in general. My most recent one would be to address allowing new users the ability to start at 5 reputation. This would make them value their reputation more, and remove downvoted content to get reputation back. At the moment, if a 1 reputation user receives a downvote there is no reason for them to delete their content. Often it can happen over time, but that results in closure, more downvotes, and sometimes deletion from the community which weighs heavily against them in the ban metric and also takes a lot of time from the community. I have a feature request on MSE if you are interested in this topic right now: New users don't value reputation

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

I love chat, what a great feature and group of people! I have posted too many messages to chat (70,000) and am very familiar with how it works and avenues of moderation there. Jon Clements is a good guy, and we mostly agree with each other on the types of chat moderation required. You can see a post that he created which I answered on moderating chat here: How do I moderate my own chatroom?

I have posted too many messages to chat (70,000) that's hilarious.. As for the code only answers, I always skip them. I don't feel good about deleting them, and am never sure what to do with them, I like your point of view. Good luck :)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:18

slugster's answers

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. [...] How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

This is one of my pet hates and it is one I've encountered and helped to deal with in the past via meta posts and/or flagging for mod attention. I believe that there should be no leniency with this one - users need to know that they must exercise caution and responsibility when editing community content.

If they cannot edit properly then they shouldn't be doing it. For a user that requires review approval I would revoke their edit rights for a period of time and look to roll back their edits. For someone with full editing rights they still need an editing holiday, although this is trickier to implement due to the tools and/or process.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

A VLQ flag should not be used to indicate I don't like this answer or I don't understand this answer. I would decline the flag because answers like this must be dealt with first and foremost by community voting.

Once sufficient down votes have been accumulated the answer can be deleted by the community. While dealing with the flag I would also consider leaving a comment asking for further explanation - I like to leave feedback wherever practicable.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

I have an extensive Meta contribution across two different Metas, possibly the most for any of the candidates.
This is a great indication of my style and community input. I have a number of highly upvoted answers (and here for Meta.SE), and I even leave my negatively voted answers up where my opinion hasn't been popular.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Some users might contribute good material, but the community is greater than the individual. Moderators have tools to contact users in cases like this. If the user refuses to learn or persists with their behavioral issues then there can be justification for a suspension.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

When working as part of a team you have to respect the other team members, especially if you want them to respect your decisions.
I would have to have good reasons to challenge their action, if so I would raise it with the other moderator in private and talk it over with them. The only time I would arbitrarily undo another mod's action is if it was in response to a flag or edit that had fundamentally changed the offending post.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

This is a tricky one and there is no one right answer.
While minorities might be offended other people also have the right to express themselves.
Stack Overflow is a very large international community, so unless the post was deliberately abusive, trolling, or just unnecessary then I would tend to leave it alone.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Deletion doesn't make the question/answer history go away. Where warranted my preferred action would be to have the post anonymized, or have confidential information redacted by the SE staff.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

I can state categorically that being a mod has changed my close voting behavior.
Unless the question is blatantly in need of closure I will defer to the community - once it has 3 or 4 close votes I will then cast my own. For regular voting actions (i.e. with no flags) it is important to let the community take action first, it is not the moderator's duty to dictate how the community should vote.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

Personally the only thing I feel needs immediate action is the process in the close vote queue - every time I go to that queue I feel my life force draining away as it is tediously boring and takes a good amount of time to review properly. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it does need some more thought.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? [...]

Trolls and trouble makers need to be stopped no matter which outlet they use. So yes, I would help moderate the chat rooms.

I know this is off topic, but your interest in martial arts is a plus to me. I have three obsessed children, The oldest teaches for a living, and I am so glad that they love it, such a good discipline, community and fitness.. Anyway, back on track, I totally agree with you about the close vote queue.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:15

@MrsEd Thanks :) I find that it comes through in my moderation style, you tend to be a bit more respectful and helpful to new people. Don't forget to send your kids over to MartialArts.SE!
– slugsterNov 18 '15 at 21:15

1

My 15 yr old answered a few question on bjj a couple of years ago, they were very short answers. And yeh, I can see that style in how you answered the questions here.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 21:23

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

If those edits are harmful or completely superfluous e.g. they add unnecessary formatting and they clutter the Suggested Edits queue, then they are a relatively small problem. Not all reviewers are robo-reviewers, plus there're bots that detect controversial edits and report them to principled people. Those with too many rejected edits get banned fairly quickly. If I notice this pattern I'll politely warn the editor about consequences of their actions and ask them to stop. If they continue, I'll put a temporary edit ban and go through posts they edited to see if there’s anything that needs to be done. The situation becomes worse if the editor has more than 2k of reputation: these edits are likely to go unnoticed. I'll most probably perform the same actions, we'll see how bad those edits are.

If edits are minor, but neither harmful nor superfluous and they appear in the Suggested Edits queue they often aren't a problem (thank reviewers that improve edits), but they do become a problem as their quantity increases. Same as 1. They are not a problem, when the user has full editing privileges. There are often good reasons for such edits (tag burnination, retagging, removing “Thanks” etc.), they don't require any actions.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No, I do not. They are answers and are not very low quality ones. The best course of action is to downvote, comment, and move on. 20k+ users can delete answers with negative score and they often do so. When the community can handle the situation, it's best for moderator to not intervene.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

The steady stream of valuable answers does not mean that the toxic behaviour should be tolerated. I'll tell them that in comments and/or via a (semi-)private, possibly even off-site, way of communication. If they choose to continue, I'll let other moderators know about the issue and ask them whether they think the situation warrants a temporary suspension.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

As far as I can tell, it's better to let another diamond moderator handle this. The last thing the site needs is the rollback/close vote/delete vote war between elected moderators.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

I check if the flagged item is indeed rude or offensive and

remove the problematic part of post/comment if it's a useful post/comment

just delete the post/comment if it's nothing but a hate speech

and delete the inevitable discussion the flagged post/comment spawned. In case the post/comment is extremely rude, the poster is likely to get a temporary suspension.

If it's obvious that the post/comment isn’t rude or offensive, I’ll decline the flag and explain my reasoning.

If this isn’t a clear-cut case, I’ll ask what the CM team has to say about it.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

This isn’t really a question about moderation, but rather about the Stack Overflow licensing rules. The content created on StackOverflow belongs to Stack Overflow. Users shouldn’t be deleting useful content. Given that answers are very good, I will not satisfy their request. This has been brought up multiple times on Meta(s).

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Yes, I will vote to close slightly less often. I recently got a python tag gold badge, so I already have experience closing questions single-handedly and reopening them if my decision was wrong (doesn't happen often though).

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I second Undo’s meta post. Also, I'd help people interested in dealing with the CV queue by increasing the daily close vote limit from 50 to 80, increasing the daily review limit from 40 to 60 and extending the lifetime of close votes. The queue is huge, come on...

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members. Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Yes, I will. As I mentioned in my nomination, I’ll try to remain active in chat.

rekire's answers

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

My first choice would be to contact the user and tell him that should stop that minor edits and that he should try to make significant changes not just one or two words. If that user is just interested in fixing typos I would ask him to stop that until he has reached the edit privilege for minor edits.

With the edit privilege he can continue improving also minor things since small typos can change the meaning or just disturbs the readability. However the focus should be always on the complete posting. If there is a batch of just changing one special typo I would ask the user to stop it and remember him to improve the full post and no single words.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

That is hard to say in general it depends on the complexity of the problem, the votes and the views of the question. If the question has also a negative score or is closed as duplicate I would properly delete the whole question especially if it has no much views depending on the age. If there are multiple better answers I would delete the answer ether or might be not if it is somehow beautiful.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

Well this one here where I collected some racist sock puppets. Out of the view what I try to help Stack Overflow this observation might be from interest.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

That really depends on what causes the flags. If this has a serious background I would ask the user to stop the reason of the flagging. If this does not help a temporally ban might help to let the user think about it. If this still does not help it is in my opinion better to ban such a user when he is a trouble maker, no matter of the good sights. Same rules for everyone.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would get in touch with that moderator to give him the change to revert that operation of cause just when he agrees with me. You should never do the exact opposite of another team mate because this causes a bad view of the whole team.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

If I would not be sure, I would ask other members of the team. If this belongs to a irrelevant small group I would handle the flag but I would reject the offensive part since that could harm the user which was not intended on both sites.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

If the posting does not contain secrets like API keys or some other which really risks the user I, would edit this details out and ask a CM to delete revision, in the meantime I would also delete the whole posting temporally. If this is just about homework or something similar I would not delete it. Stack Overflow is a public resource. End of discussion.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Sure this would change my behavior since I can do more, I would do more. With more powers you get more responsibilities. So I would do what I was asked for.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

The only thing I would change if I could would be the review limits. I guess there should be more then 20 reviews per day, but you still need to care about the users. It should been avoided that some users review 24/7 there is a real world out there.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

I already moderatethe chat where I am daily I clean it up regularly without being an evil mastermind. I guess all users in the chat will agree that I do a good job in this matter.

` If this belongs to a irrelevant small group`? what do you mean with irrelevant group?
– Jorge LeitãoNov 21 '15 at 7:33

1

Let's say a group of persons that have my first name and the same birthday. A so vague group which doesn't make sense or is relevant in the world. I mean I'm sure that group is bigger then one but why should you care for an almost non-existent group? Let's say there name contains a special character which is not supported by Unicode is it right to make costs of millions to support it for 3 people if you could use an image instead? It has to make sense and you should avoid things just because they are possible. I hope that makes my position clear.
– rekireNov 21 '15 at 7:45

bjb568's answers

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

Given this, it's likely that both the editor and many of the edit reviewers don't know the requirements for suggested edits. To educate the editor, something as simple as inviting them to a new chat room and explaining how edits must be substantiative will probably be enough. As for the reviewers, the simplest and most effective way to correct their behavior is to ban them from review and explaining their mistakes.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

Out of all the crappy posts on the site, why delete an answer which goes to the length to give a complete solution? An answer with code only is arguably better than an answer with just explanation, provided the code speaks for itself. It's obviously not the best answer, so I could nudge the author to provide some explanation via a comment and perhaps downvote it, but an answer of working code is pretty good in the grand scheme of things. I'd decline the flag.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Every member of the community must abide by the Be Nice policy. Noisy and rude comments should be flagged and removed — high-rep users get no exemption. So in this case I would communicate with the user to remind them that comments aren't for arguments. It's fine (provided it's mutually respectful) to discuss further in chat.

If the user however ignores this and keeps generating noise in comments, I would need to consider a suspension. Of course I would only suspend a valuable member of the community with consensus among several other moderators.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

It really doesn't matter what happened to just one borderline question. I'd just move on with life… If others disagree strongly enough they can start a discussion on meta.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

If I think that the post was made with inflammatory intention, I'd delete it. Otherwise, things shouldn't be censored just because it annoys some people. With such a diverse community a lot of things are bound to be offensive to a subset, so it's infeasible to try to make everyone happy.

However, if the post contained something obscure enough that I couldn't try to gauge its intent, I would contact another moderator to confirm whether it's ok or not.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

This is valuable content, so deletion should be avoided if possible. Some other options are:

escalating to a CM to disassociate it if it just can't be connected to their identity — after all, the content is already licensed to Stack Overflow so it can still be used if it's valuable

edit out the problematic parts if they're not important, then escalate so the revision can be deleted

if they've done this many times before, just don't intervene and let them suffer for not checking before they post

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

I would probably vote to close questions less since I'd be focused on mod tasks rather than closing. I would also want the power of deciding edge cases rest on the community and not be unanimously decided.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I think there needs to be less incentive for answering questions that will be closed. Now, answerers looking for easy rep can answer the easy and poorly-asked questions and gain quick rep even if the question eventually gets closed. This may be a bit difficult to implement however, and I'm not quite sure how you could do this without negative side effects. But if implemented, it should help weaken the bond between the help vampire and the overeager rep-hunter.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Certainly. I'm quite active in chat (albeit mostly on the Meta Stack Exchange rather than Stack Overflow), and I'd be glad to create some order in the chaos over there :)

Of course, more moderators in chat shouldn't be used as a crutch to the difficulty for chat to self-govern. There need to be some better mod tools to empower regular chat users too.

If any of you have further questions about my moderation style, ping me in the election chatroom and I'll do my best to answer your questions. <3

I don't recall exactly what, but something in the last election made me not want you to be a moderator. Reading your answers to this years questions, I am happy to say I no longer feel that way. I really like how you've laid out your answers and thoughts here, and feel that you would, indeed, make a good moderator. Good luck, bjb!
– KendraNov 17 '15 at 15:21

I think there needs to be less incentive for answering questions that will be closed. I like this comment, and as you've pointed out, it's not so easy to implement, perhaps with a time limit.. if a question is closed with x hours of being posted, as opposed to two years later. I love that kitten pic. :)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:08

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small
word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement
of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the
course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by
reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor
and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a
user who has full editing privileges?

He / she is doing this on purpose. If a person knows that this is a mistake (45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour are too many edits from a person with legitimate interest in improving the community) and still does it for personal gain (a badge?), then he has to be punished appropriately. A small ban would do, 2-3 days would be enough. Not punishing the person will make them believe that they can do anything here. This should happen irrespective of what privileges / experience that person has. The ban could be increased if he OP is promoting stuff / vandalising posts in the edits.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one
hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an
experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand,
it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

The answer should stand. Remember, the answers we post are not only for the OP but for every person out there. If the code is correct and self-explanatory, then I would leave a comment asking the poster to explain his answer. But the answer stands.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

Yes. This post shows what I intend to do with rude people asking improper questions getting answers.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of
arguments/flags from comments?

If the user is picking up fights or posting inappropriate comments, then he will have to be suspended (or warned, depending on what he has done actually). A private chat telling the OP that rudeness is not acceptable on SO should be the first thing.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Talk to the other mod and tell him what you think might have been the best way to handle the situation.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the
issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive
to the majority of users. What do you do?

We can't ignore blind people because most of us can see :). If that post is really offensive even to one user, then it has to be removed.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having
it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the
question?

This has to be handled on a case-to-case basis. If there is some code that the OP doesn't want his teacher to see, then it is OK to keep it. SO is not a clipboard where you have post a question, get an answer and then say bye-bye. If there is an employee who has inadvertently added some code which he shouldn't have, then deletion is the right way to go. Or even editing the question by removing the trouble-causing part would make sense (if people are able to understand what the question / answers are).

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close
questions? More? Less?

No. It won't. If there is a bad post, it will get a close vote. Power to close / delete posts wont change me.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for
the community?

Every action should have a comment. What I mean by this is that sometimes I get a downvote(s) without comment(s) which keeps me wondering what is wrong with my answer. Down-votes don't scare me, but the fact that I am wrong does. Without proper feedback a downvote means nothing. So, every downvote should have a comment (the down-voter might choose to agree with the reason someone else down-voted and support it by adding a +1. But there must be atleast one reason.)

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done
some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the
past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags,
stars, and other worst of all - other members. Obviously, chat is
secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some
additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless
in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from
time to time.

Yes, I could do that. I can't say I would be great at it (like Jon :P) but I can try.

I love We can't ignore blind people because most of us can see, very insightful (pardon the pun) :)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:04

6

@MrsEd - LOL. Down votes and sarcasm shouldn't prevent a person from posting what he thinks is right :P
– TheLostMindNov 19 '15 at 4:54

You should create a header "Vinod's answers" like most candidates did, it makes you stand out a bit more. People scrolling down could get the impression your answers are part of the other guy.
– Lave LoosNov 23 '15 at 10:08

Thomas Owens's Answers

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

The user doing the edits would get, minimally, a moderator message pointing to the guidelines for making edits. If they have a history of this behavior (on Stack Overflow or on other sites), it may warrant a short suspension as well.

For the reviewers, I'd look to see if they were trying to game the system for review badges or just made a mistake. I'd revoke review privileges and send a moderator message to them if I felt that it was attempting to game the system.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

Yes, I'd delete the answer. But I'd also throw the moderator notice about answers requiring an explanation and a comment on the question to help the user out with understanding the expectations.

A couple of people have pointed out in the comments that this answer is controversial, so I'd like to expand on it.

I'm a firm believer in promoting high quality questions and answers that are useful to the broader population. Answers should be complete and thorough. My concern is not for the OP, but for people who stumble across this question in the future from Google, perhaps new programmers who may have never been exposed to Stack Overflow before. I don't want these people to get the wrong impression of what this site is - I want them to see helpful answers that explain why something is the way it is or drawbacks to certain answers. This will make them more likely to stick around, perhaps turning into people who generate good questions and good answers.

Taking on the perspective of an expert, I'm discouraged by quickly posted answers that are low quality. If I'm spending 10-15 minutes working on an answer that includes code as well as explanations, and 3 or 4 people post low quality answers that aren't complete and get up votes (or even a quick accept), my hard work gets buried and may not get recognition.

From the perspective of people looking for questions to answer, once a question has answers (and especially if those answers have up votes), finding the question becomes more difficult. I may have a better answer, but not be aware that the question doesn't already have a good or great answer that I can provide.

Finally, down voting and deleting these low quality answers can trigger an answer block until the user goes back through their answers, edits them, and gets them undeleted. If they can't provide the kind of answers that we expect, then they won't be welcome to answer questions here.

This sounds harsh, but I think that it is best in the long run for any community. Deletion is not permanent - it's intended to be undone if and when the answer is fixed. the trend should be to encourage higher quality answers.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

On Meta.SO (post-split), not really. I've been more of a passive participant on Meta.SO since the Meta.SE split. If you would like a demonstration of Meta participation as a moderator, I would point out that I've been a moderator on Programmers.SE for several years now and do have not-insignificant meta participation there.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

A moderator message is appropriate. If continued, suspensions are also warranted. At the end of the day, I'd rather have one person be upset and perhaps leave the site / network than have that person drive away two or more people who could turn into valuable participants and community members.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I wouldn't unilaterally open it. I'd ping them in chat and ask first. If there's a Meta discussion about it, I'd also forward it to them and let them handle it. If there are flags and/or a meta discussion indicating that the community thinks it should be reopened and the other mod isn't responsive, I'd evaluate myself and reopen if I agree with the community. I'd make sure the other mod was in the loop on what happened, though.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

If I think that it seems offensive, I'd take action like any other offensive post. I can use Google to get background or even talk to other mods in private.

If it was a comment, I really wouldn't hesitate to delete. Repeat offenders can be dealt with as well, with annotations, mod messages, and suspensions, if necessary. For posts, edits (or deletions if the post is not saveable) and annotations, mod messages, and/or suspensions would be appropriate.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

No. I'd elevate this to the CM team for disassociation. I'd also edit any personal identifying information out of the question and ask for those edits to be removed by the CM team. However, I'm not going to allow good content to be destroyed by a user if it's helpful to other people.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

No change, really. I may be less likely to cast the first close vote on a question, though, unless it's very clearly closeable.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I don't think any. The rules appear to have generally worked pretty well, and the methods available to the community for changing approaches seem to work across the network.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

It depends. Unless it's either clearly a serious problem or its in a room I frequent, probably not. If I'm asked to provide help, I will, but I don't think I'd "babysit" any chat rooms.

I really don't understand the downvotes on your response. They are all quite sound and reliable answers for a potential mod. I was also impressed with your nomination blurb. As I see it, you'd be an excellent mod, particularly with your experience on programmers.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:02

@MrsEd I don't understand either. If anyone has any feedback, I'd very much appreciate it...
– Thomas OwensNov 18 '15 at 19:10

Well I don't know you, but you strike me as being dependable and level headed, perhaps not as talkative as some of us (myself included), but I think that can be a good thing in a mod. You're not backward in coming forward, but your flags are not set to verbose! :) Oh and that is meant as a compliment.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 19:32

I agree, #2 isn't how I'd do it. Even when lacking explanation, a answer can still be helpful. It can also be improved.
– CerbrusNov 19 '15 at 7:59

@Bergi I have expanded on my answer to 2. It may be controversial, but there are good reasons that I hope I've elaborated on.
– Thomas OwensNov 19 '15 at 11:06

@Cerbrus I've expanded on the answer to #2. Hopefully that clears it up. I would not consider that kind of answer to be helpful, and it can still be improved after deletion. Down voting and deleting such answers makes them hidden from lower rep users so they don't provide a bad example and may trigger the automatic answer blocks, stopping future low quality answers if its a pattern for a user.
– Thomas OwensNov 19 '15 at 11:07

@ThomasOwens: How would your process for undeletion after improvement look like? Afaik, posts deleted by a mod can only be undeleted by a mod again.
– BergiNov 19 '15 at 22:42

@Bergi Ideally, it would be undoable by users. If changes are necessary, then changes are necessary and should be proposed. However, maintaining quality is important so if I have the power to do something to improve site quality and set an example, I will.
– Thomas OwensNov 20 '15 at 1:00

Yeh, I'm a believer that we need to take measure to really discourage low quality posts and to get them off the site (to the main stream user)
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 20 '15 at 6:33

Hi Thomas, m just a newbee who loves to help on SO and found that you are going good but m not agree with some of your answer.. hope you won't mind and sorry if i did mistakes but i think i can share my view so
– Leo the lionNov 21 '15 at 7:25

About #2, you said you will delete the answer, can't we edit the answer or add any comment to let that user know that please edit and explain why, rather then deleting? By which you will only haras to guy who answer that i did not get any comment and deleted? yes if he is trying to provide damn low quality answer from so many time then we can take some actions but just straight deleting that answer won't be good enough..sorry
– Leo the lionNov 21 '15 at 7:25

1

@Leothelion I never said that policies don't need to change. I said that I would not single-handedly change policies because the current, community-driven approach on Meta is sufficient. I agree that there are policies on SO that we should look at changing, but it's not my job as a moderator to set or change policy, but to enforce the norms of the community as a whole...and to be a janitor, cleaning things up that non-mod community members can't.
– Thomas OwensNov 21 '15 at 14:00

1

Thomas Owens is the reason I didn't permanently quit contributing to Stack Exchange today. Shocked and appalled to see such low votes.
– QixNov 24 '15 at 16:10

Duchess Answers:

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

In my experience with handling users who are trying to go around the system - aka here to gain rep or (less likely but possible), manipulate questions, the best way is to engage them personally. Let them know what they're doing wrong and the potential consequences if continued (be it suspended edit rights, or a removal of reputation equivalent to the bad edits accumulated.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

No, a correct answer is a correct answer. Again, engaging the user to guide them to create better answers is key. While the answer doesn't deserve to be deleted, one can ask the poster to add an explanation. At the most, downvote, comment and move on.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

I do! My question here about "targeting users" by finding (not going out to find, but coming across) a user and seeing they have poor quality questions and answers. My personal opinion is that if you are not downvoting out of spite, while you are indeed targeting the user, you are obligated to provide feedback of the quality of the answers be it downvotes and or comments.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would chalk this one up with borderline the edit spree question. Talk to the user, let them know that their comments cause issues. Help them word their counter arguments to come off less defensive or aggressive. If that doesn't work, (if possible), remove commenting rights for a short period of time.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Depends on the situation. If I was a moderator when this happened, I would talk to them privately. From my experience on being a "staff member" (game staff, irrelevant), making a public scene with another staffer is poor public image. If I was not a moderator, I would take it to the community with a meta post, unbiased explaining why I felt the question should not have been removed or closed, and see what the community says.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

This is a tricky one. It could very well slip the mind if some foreign term was used that I was unaware as pejorative. However, if I did see it being an offensive term, give the user a strict warning that racial or religious or any other human intolerance is not to be had here. Bad news bears!

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

There is a way around this. You could always attempt to make the question anonymous, be it a Community answer, removal of sensitive data, and an explanation that the question could benefit future users. If the question is unable to do that -- delete the question, and try to make a similar situation as an question and propagate the answers to who posted them. If it's a good question with good answers, it's worth the time for the sake of the future people it will help, but it's also important to respect the users education and career line.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

The golden hammer is immense responsibility. One vote shuts down an entire question. I would most definitely think twice about closing a question, making absolute sure it's a duplicate, or too broad before using it. Some blatant cases are easy, but when in doubt, let the community decide, maybe throw in a comment to attempt to salvage it.

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I whole heartedly agree with Vinod on this one. Downvotes should require a reason. Several answers I have personally posted were downvoted, and to this day I don't know why they were wrong, which irks me because I wish to learn. I don't like posting bad material! I like to know why, so that I can fix.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members. Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

I am an extremely active chat user. I would branch out to more rooms of course, but I am available daily in the JavaScript room. This is a non-issue for me, I love the stack chats.

I remember coming to the javascript chat room a few times. I encountered you as very childish, arrogant, and shall we say acting like a "script kiddie". Sorry I cannot vote for someone who acts like that.
– JonHNov 19 '15 at 4:59

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If I remember correctly, you came in to the JS room, and tried to tell us to stay on topic and not tell jokes or talk to each other, during a period in which there were no questions being asked or discussed. We asked you not to come in, not being a regular, and tell us how to chat. :) Please point out how that is acting like a script kiddie?
– Sterling ArcherNov 19 '15 at 14:12

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So, Sterling is a human being capable of having fun once in a while. Surely, we only want robots as mods. (+1)
– CerbrusNov 19 '15 at 14:18

Is moderating really "change"? What change can you effect as a moderator, realistically? And don't look at this as one nominee attacking another, because you may just get my vote with your answer.
– Johnny BonesNov 19 '15 at 19:28

A user with less than 2,000 rep is on an edit spree, changing nothing more in all the posts they're editing than one or two small word(s), and their edit is either incomplete or is not an improvement of the post each time. They're up to 45 similar/identical edits in the course of an hour, and a majority of these are being approved by reviewers that aren't paying attention. How do you handle this editor and the reviewers? How would you handle a similar situation with a user who has full editing privileges?

The reviewers should get a 3-day suspension for reviews. We don't need robo-reviewers here. The user should receive an email pointing to the FAQ on what makes a good review, with a warning that further non-compliance will receive a 7-day suspension from reviews. I would respond identically to a user with full editing privileges.

A user flags (as low quality or NAA) an answer that consists of only code -- no explanation, no references, just code. On the one hand, the answer is (1) correct and (2) self-explanatory to an experienced user of the language/tool in question. On the other hand, it's possibly meaningless to the OP. Do you delete the answer?

I would add a comment directed at the user who answered, asking them to expand on the answer. I would mark the flag as helpful, but decline it.

Do you have any Meta posts that you're particularly proud of, or that you feel best demonstrate your moderation style?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

A personal email, letting them know we value their input but have also received a few complaints. Then a gentle reminder on expected etiquette from the user base. You catch more flies with honey, as the saying goes.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Take it to chat. I'm a reasonable guy, if you can provide a good answer to why you closed the question, I might change my mind and agree with you.

A user flags a post or comment as rude or offensive to a minority group, or as a member of a minority group. You know little about the issues facing this minority group and the post would not be offensive to the majority of users. What do you do?

I'd mark the flag as helpful, but decline it. Unless it was really overt, then I'd remove the comment.

A question is asked and receives some very good answers. The asker then flags this question and asks for it to be deleted because having it up will cause them trouble at work or school. Do you delete the question?

Once a question is posted, it becomes the property of SO under the TOS. The question would stay, although I wouldn't be adverse to editing anything that can cause it to create distance from the user yet still keep the spirit of the question intact.

Being a moderator you will able to close questions on your own and override other community votes. Will this change how you vote to close questions? More? Less?

Of course. Knowing you can override anyone's vote carries responsibility, which I've handled just fine over on Music Fans

If you could add/revise one Stack Overflow policy/guideline, what would you change? Why would you change it, and what would it mean for the community?

I think I would push for comments to be able to be downvoted out. Or hidden. I think Discus does this on their MBs; when a comment gets enough downvotes it gets automatically hidden. Right now, you can only either flag or upvote a comment, and that limits what can be done with them.

Will you be willing to moderate the chatrooms? Right now, Jon Clements is the only moderator who actively moderates chat. He's done some great work there already, but he can't babysit us 24/7. In the past few months, there have been a number of trolls who abuse flags, stars, and other worst of all - other members.
Obviously, chat is secondary to the main site. But we'd certainly appreciate some additional help over there. Room owners are actually quite powerless in most situations. And I'm sure Jon would appreciate some rest from time to time.

Yes, I would moderate chat but I think it should be done in shifts if you're looking for complete moderation. I understand that this is entirely volunteer work, but having each moderator take one hour or so could allow for chat to have constant moderation without putting too much pressure on one person to moderate it.

"I would mark the flag as helpful, but decline it." Can you clarify that? (I assume you mean, mark the flag as helpful but not delete the answer, but your wording there is a tad confusing.) That's regarding question 2. You use similar wording for question 6. || "because it shows a little of my sense of humor as well as my ability to provide a good answer to a serious question." But what does that have to do with the abilities to be a moderator? Can you expand on why you chose that one?
– KendraNov 16 '15 at 22:07

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Your assumption is correct; I would mark the flag as helpful but not delete the answer. As for why I chose that Meta post, I think it shows that I can be informative and yet not pompous/heavy-handed. I think that's important because as a moderator you want to be knowledgeable and yet not come off as self-important. I've seen that done in the past, and it has a negative effect on participation. It's important that SO is seen as a repository of good information, but not as a place where moderators treat you poorly. And yes, I've seen it happen here.
– Johnny BonesNov 16 '15 at 22:15

That's a great answer, thanks for your quick response! Good luck in the elections!
– KendraNov 16 '15 at 22:16

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If anyone who disagrees with my answers could give me a little insight... I'd say this particular question is the perfect example of when comments to downvotes are warranted and extremely helpful.
– Johnny BonesNov 17 '15 at 14:25

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How will you handle sexist remarks as a moderator, while making derogatory comments like "can you make a women's version that says, "My eyes are up here"?" in chat?
– ssubeNov 17 '15 at 21:51

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I really appreciate your change in profile pic. I actually flagged it as offensive and it was declined (it's not personal to you, as you have a lot of interesting things to say). I just found the pic off on this type of site, especially if you consider if I used a female equivalent on this site, how long would that last? What do you think of this being offensive to me as a woman and the fact the flag was declined?
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 9:30

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@JohnnyBones I think your comment asking for feedback is more than reasonable. To me, you seem like a fun guy and would be a great asset at a social gathering. And this may translate into being a little unprofessional for the site. I don't mean to be unkind, and that's just one person's opinion. I think if you run again, you will do a lot better. With any community, when choosing a "leader type" they look towards the model type of that community.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 18 '15 at 21:09

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@MrsEd - In today's day and age you really have to be overly "PC", and even that doesn't prevent everyone from being offended. My grandmother used to say (long before all this PC started), "You can't make everyone happy, so make yourself happy." All I can say is, it's a piece of wood. If anyone makes it more than that, it's a reflection of their own thoughts. Might not be the popular "I'm going to cowtow to everyone" answer, but it's the stone-cold truth. As for why it was declined? Probably because those who reviewed it saw it as a piece of wood.
– Johnny BonesNov 19 '15 at 19:06

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@JohnnyBones I think this is the attitude why you are not being received well as a mod nominee. "You can't make everyone happy, so make yourself happy." the whole idea of being a mod is to put your own needs aside to serve the community. As for it being a piece of wood, anyone who saw it know perfectly well what it was supposed to resemble and playing that game of it's a piece of wood, will only further cause your popularity to drop. A mod needs to be able to take responsibility for their mistakes and own them. As for being overly PC I couldn't agree more about loss of freedom.. to be cont
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 19 '15 at 19:16

2

@MrsEd - You really can't please everyone. That's just reality. It's not a matter of "serve the community", because there will always be someone unhappy with a decision. If anything, that sets me above the pack because it allows me to make the right decision and not the popular decision.
– Johnny BonesNov 19 '15 at 19:19

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of speech. However within the context of this site it really has nothing to do with "PC" and maintaining a cohesive community. In the case of sexuality and sexism (two separate issues) neither have a place on SO. This is not to be confused with gender and how the too affect people based on gender (and it can equally offend men as well as women, some women will not be offended). I don't want jokes referring to people's breasts or a perceived idea that men often will focus on women's breasts and not their faces to be cont
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 19 '15 at 19:20

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which objectifies women and implies that they are more worthwhile to thise types of men as sex objects than intelligent beings. Also I suspect the pic flag was declined as the policy on user names and icons is more liberal than comments/posts. I flagged it, as you were running for moderator and as a mod the image was an unacceptable representation of what our community tries to reflect.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 19 '15 at 19:20

1

@JohnnyBones but that is your perception of what the right decision is, and myself and some others are trying to attempt to say that your vision of what is right, may be ok in other situations, but not on SO.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 19 '15 at 19:21

@MrsEd - All I know is that it works fine on the site where I'm a mod. Your vision of what a mod is or does may not be what everyone else's vision is. I don't think it's fair to judge me based on limited interaction. But, again, I can't please everyone.
– Johnny BonesNov 19 '15 at 19:26

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That is a perverse comment, when you explicitly ask for feedback on the downvotes. We only can judge you and the other nominees on whatever limited/abundant interactions we've had with each of you. You cannot sweep a disagreement or valid argument under the rug with "I can't please everyone" it does not address the issue. Likewise Your vision of what a mod is or does may not be what everyone else's vision is although this is true, I'm taking a well educated guess that this roughly conforms to the sites vision. Music is a different site to SO. Very diff audience.
– Yvette Colomb♦Nov 19 '15 at 19:35